Discussion

Technical Question - How does one hear about 'new' restaurants? [moved from LA board]

I have several food-and-wine obsessed friends, and lurk a lot on this board, and every once in a while you hear about some new place coming in - before it comes in.

For example, I've heard recently about an OC location for Crustacean; Marcus Samuelson's burger joint; some Cat Cora concept; a Goodell place going into the old Cafe Azul (or whatever it was called) location in CM - but my question is, where do people hear about these things?

I RSS the food section of the register, and I hear a lot word-of-mouth, but I would be interested to know if there is some benchmark source - internet or print, or otherwise - for this sort of information - that is, new restaurants/food-wine related retail coming into the Orange County (and I guess Long Beach) area.

Open, really? I guess I will check them out. I'm somewhat skeptical of celebrity-chef restaurants, particularly when their involvement seems to involve little more than a licensing agreement to use their name, but who knows... I hope they're great. I am a big fan of Samuelson, so I am intrigued.

There's nothing like walking/driving through a neighbourhood, looking for places that are about to be open. Other than have someone else spot it and tell you, pounding the pavement is probably the most useful approach, especially for places without a PR budget.

Other potentially useful sources include classified ads for jobs, such as Craig's List. Look for restaurants that are hiring - also useful for identifying changes in staff. Foreign language papers may come in handy in this area as well.

Limster has hit the nail on the head. I've learned often about restaurants due to open, in many regions in and out of the US, for many years, almost always just by paying attention. To posted notices, to what's happening in neighborhoods with other restaurants, to word of mouth from people working in those restaurants or from people who eat out often. Sometimes from random newspaper items. Lots of this information circulates, but in many ways.

I discovered this on the oc register site, and it seems pretty helpful. if all of us who heard about new restauraunts coming in would email her, maybe this would end up being the account of record for new restaurants in OC/Long Beach.